How to change line spacing

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After copying some text from GMail to Evernote, the text has large (wasted) space between lines. How do I edit the line spacing after the paste. Please, no work-arounds like passing through NotePad or paste as text-only. I want to be able to modify the linespacing in the Evernote editor.

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Slightly better. But, now it puts a blank line between each line. So I have to delete all the blank lines (one per line) to pull everything tight. Not something I want to do with regularity, or worse, with large pastes.

What I really want to do is change the line spacing. I've been waiting patiently on 4.x hoping for a fix for this (I had read somewhere that 4.x was going to fix it). So I'm pretty bummed that this problem still persists. I see that a lot of "the internet" is complaining about it.

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I'm using 4.2.0.3616 (120603). I pasted the contents of an e-mail from Gmail into a note using Ctrl+V and the note looks correct to me. Are you still seeing this problem when using this specific version of EN 4 or higher?

Thanks,

Emerick

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Note the original post in this thread. I want to be able to change the line spacing after pasting into Evernote.

I paste things in from all over the place (Outlook, PowerPoint, Chrome, etc). Invariably some stuff comes across with the ULTRA annoying wide line spacing and there's just no way to fix it once it's in Evernote that way. I want:

1) A way to tell Evernote "Never apply line spacing larger than X to anything I paste in -- ever".

2) To be able to select a bunch of text and change the line spacing.

The Evernote editor is not much of an editor if it allows variable line spacing to be pasted in, but then not be able to change it. Does Onenote have this limitation? I've never tried it.

Thanks,

--Myles

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After pasting, you can select the pasted text and press Ctrl+Space (or select Format -> Simplify Formatting from the menubar). This removes all style attributes and font tags from the underlying HTML, which means that it should eliminate line-height properties as well.

We don't provide a finer-grained way to adjust only the line spacing at the moment, but thanks for the suggestion.

Emerick

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After pasting, you can select the pasted text and press Ctrl+Space (or select Format -> Simplify Formatting from the menubar). This removes all style attributes and font tags from the underlying HTML, which means that it should eliminate line-height properties as well.

We don't provide a finer-grained way to adjust only the line spacing at the moment, but thanks for the suggestion.

Emerick

This is not a feature request. We're asking for a bug fix!

I want to confirm that my own experience, similar to many users on the forums (do a search for "line spacing") is that there's a problem with Evernote's handling of line spacing in text.

Just one example, from another thread:

I have the same issue. Lots & lots of basic text editing problems. Line spaces double when I don't want them. Copy & past fonts get upscaled & downscaled size at random. Deleting lines does not get rid of the bad formatting. It persists even when the bad lines are removed.

I consider these basic text editing issues, not features.

(Emphasis added.)

I'm having the same experience, using the Mac desktop version 3.2.0 (premium). Even when I "simplify formatting" it's not clearing the formatting consistently. Some lines are "simplified" to single-spacing - others have a line inserted between. Tried CTRL/Command-SHIFT-V instead of CTRL/Command-V and I still end up with wide spacing. Same thing with space-V, as Emerick suggested. And, like some other users, I tried cleaning up the problem by pasting into an intermediary program (textedit), turning the copy into Plaintext, and pasting into Evernote. Still had an extra space between lines. Only way re-pasting (and that's not a reasonable thing to need to do) works is with a brand new note. It's not a "feature request" to want "simplify formatting" to strip ALL of the formatting out of our notes. I'm growing to really, really like Evernote but, as another user commented, Evernote's "failure to support plain text" is a major flaw. Evernote needs some kind of line-spacing control, even if it's just the ability to consistently strip down to single-spacing. Fix this please.

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Interesting how this thread started two years ago has remained completely actual...

Why EN does not see any priority in improving not even a bit on the text editor beats me, really.

My problems & workarounds concerning line spacing are exactly the same as above, so sorry, no news there. I always suspected it would have to do with the way html tags are handled under the cover of a paste, like emerick mentions above. But then, since we're talking basic html text editing, why not add a little functionality to access these simple 'style' html tags?! Blogs, cms editors, you name it, all of them offer that. Some button to switch to 'Source' (of the visible note text) and hop there you go <spaN style="line-spacing:1em;"> or whatever you'd want. (I put N to not have this comment itself become html...)

Hey!? The editor of this forum, of this very post while I'm typing this even offers that access!! Left top: Toggle editing mode! So what's the <em> real </em> [hey, that didn't work! this did] difference between text in a ENote, and in a html page? Mmm....

EN will of course not be telling the full story between the lines here....?

My guess is it has to do with some old, native and very deeply rooted implementation of how pasted/saved data is filtered, stripped and then represented. I full agree with Jeanmiele that this is much more a BUG (a major flaw even) than a feature request.

I'm using EN very daily to gather ideas, inspirations and references for projects; at the start, but also a lot half way the process. To gather 'what is around' on some topic (e.g. material looks, similar design examples, variations on the same theme) before making a next process decision. And along the way the notes in which I paste what I find and annotate ALWAYS gradually turn into reviewing documents of the sources given a topic. That is actually exactly what I want to do using Evernote: brigding between the divergent gathering state (aka a mess of inspiration) and the first steps of convergent ordering and reviewing, into a readable, sharable document (or page). Text is ESSENTIAL there. No need for full-blown textbook editing, but ABSOLUTELY more than what is offered now, especially if you want to hand it over to the following, even more definite, publishing step (e.g. a google doc, report, a LaTeX thesis, a web page, blog, whatever).

So why o why o why is changing line spacing (and any other html/css style attribute) not on the menu?

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I don't use Windows enough to have encountered this there, but this has been an issue for a while now on iOS, Mac, and the Web, especially with the fonts not being affected by font size or style changes. It wouldn't surprise me if Windows shared these problems.

I don't know why, but sometimes I get two spaces when there ought to be one, or lines jump over other ones when backspacing. In short, there are bugs, and they have been reported.

I am sure developers are working to get rid of them, but as jbenson's post suggests, the bugs don't seem to affect everyone, or they are at least inconsistent.

My suggestion would be to generate support tickets when possible, send along the offending notes, and keep supplying developers with data.

To avoid issues and easily deal with them when they occur, I use formatting sparingly, run things through a text editor when I encounter problems (the FormatMatch app on Mac makes conversion to plain text easy through just cutting/pasting), and sometimes start a new note (pasting in the text that has been cleaned) to make sure the gremlins are gone.

Eventually, I am sure Evernote will iron out the bugs.

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Thanks for replying; I largely agree on your arguments. Bugs should be posted as such, and sure it helps to provide details to reproduce the symptoms (I am on a Mac too; the label of this thread suggests otherwise I guess). And feature requests are other things.

But I wasn't referring to a problem with pasting text, or asking for a new button on the wrong place. I'm indeed constantly keeping a texteditor at the side, cleaning out gremlins or adding text characteristics Evernote doesn't allow for. But I sincerely dislike that I have to keep doing that. Like the one who started the thread, I wanted to know if, and then how, linespacing (pasted or not) could be controlled. Finding out it cannot be, brought me (and Jeanmiele I guess) to question why such simple text-features are left unimplemented as they are.

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Thanks for replying; I largely agree on your arguments. Bugs should be posted as such, and sure it helps to provide details to reproduce the symptoms (I am on a Mac too; the label of this thread suggests otherwise I guess). And feature requests are other things.

But I wasn't referring to a problem with pasting text, or asking for a new button on the wrong place. I'm indeed constantly keeping a texteditor at the side, cleaning out gremlins or adding text characteristics Evernote doesn't allow for. But I sincerely dislike that I have to keep doing that. Like the one who started the thread, I wanted to know if, and then how, linespacing (pasted or not) could be controlled. Finding out it cannot be, brought me (and Jeanmiele I guess) to question why such simple text-features are left unimplemented as they are.

I am not sure I understand your post completely. I read it a couple of times, but don't quite get it. Sorry. Maybe it is my weekend brain at work

Anyhow, what I am saying is that I don't know why we have format issues, or why we don't have more fine-grained control over some of the basics like line spacing, but what I do to keep things legible is to cut/paste with FormatMatch (on the Mac) or Notepad (on Windows). I shouldn't have to do that, because sometimes all of the text is completely native to Evernote, and has only existed within that note, so there shouldn't be any corruption at all, but still I get gremlins. This would seem to be a bug (or bugs) operating on multiple clients (perhaps problems with \n , \r , or \n\r ?).

One of my longstanding feature requests is for a plain text option -- 99% of the time that is all I want, and it would presumably help me avoid all sorts of annoyances. I recognize, though, that this might not be so easy to do, given Evernote's structure.

As for adding access to the enml, that would be great for some of us, but to be honest, it is quite a mess to parse through, few users would actually benefit from the addition of this feature (time and resources wasted), and customer support would have its hands full after users mucked around in there. Have you tried this?

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After pasting, you can select the pasted text and press Ctrl+Space (or select Format -> Simplify Formatting from the menubar). This removes all style attributes and font tags from the underlying HTML, which means that it should eliminate line-height properties as well.

We don't provide a finer-grained way to adjust only the line spacing at the moment, but thanks for the suggestion.

Emerick

Hmmm, really big sad-face here... especially when you look at the date that an "emerick", an Evernote employee said that Evernote doesn't "provide a finer-grained way to adjust only the line spacing". The really big sad-face becomes more so when I realize that they've known about this problem for more than two years... and the problem still exists.

I can see that Evernote is using the TinyMCE Javascript applet for it's text-editing capabilities. I tested TinyMCE on their website and it does the same thing, which is what I expected. Unfortunate.

I've even tried this, with no success... though it "should" have worked:

- copied the text into a new Notepad (Win7) document

- saved it to my Desktop as text.txt

- created a new note in the web interface of Evernote

- and pasted it in.

- Upon putting the cursor at the end of the line and hitting ENTER, I get a bigger than normal space.

- I looked at the text.txt file with HxD Hex Editor and can see that line endings are saved with "0D 0A",

- a proper Windows carriage-return/line-feed sequence AND

- I saw no additional hex-codes in the file that could lead to this behavior, so...

This suggests that it's the TinyMCE javascript editor which is interpreting the copied material, regardless of whether I select PASTE or PASTE PLAIN TEXT. I still get larger than normal line-feeds.

At work, while I have administrative rights to install software on my laptop, I do not want to sync my entire Evernote note-database to my work laptop, nor do I want to leave a copy of my notes on it, so I use the Evernote web-interface within a Google incognito tab.

Evernote, if you're listening, I'm not just using a free Evernote account; I've been using a premium-paid account since you first offered it and this has been... and continues to be... my only gripe with the Evernote app/product. There are other Javascript editors out there and, if you can't find one that meets the needs of your paying customers, maybe you might spend less time on all these Evernote offshoots you've been releasing this past year and have your developers create their own editors that give the best to your customers... us. Sorry for the griping, but this is a truly frustrating BUG.

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EN is great but has its limitations, which are annoying becuase we are used to using certin shortcuts and formatting in all our average daily use and line spacing should be an option that should have been there from the beginning. Perhaps new competitor would change things. It looks like that Apple acquired Catch notes, which I was using until recently. I am hopeful that apple will take the user expertience to the next level with catch.

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Sorry to be so late to this discussion but I may have a simple workaround to get rid of unwanted double-spaced text: select the text in question, hit the numbering icon, then hit it again to un-number the selection and it will be single spaced.

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While CTRL-SHIFT-V instead of CTRL-V worked for pasting text, having the line spacing change while in note is infuriating. I find myself deep in the middle of an organized research note only, to be interrupted by this terrible line spacing. Im pretty much going to scrap EN because of this.

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I just want to be able to click a button for double spacing on evernote just like any other word processor.

But Evernote is not a word processing program. Or even, except in a fairly rudimentary sense, a text editing program. While Evernote has indicated that there may be improvements someday in the text editing functions, right now, you're perhaps be less frustrated typing in a program designed to do what you want.

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I concur that text entry (including pasting text, but also when simply editing text) does not behave as expected. This gets very frustrating. I recently became a premium member in order to add my voice to the multitudes crying out for some Windows love.

I agree with others that this is a request to fix basic functionality, not a new feature request.

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I agree with all the above posters -- this is a major problem with EverNote.

I love everything else about EverNote, but I use line spacing to help me visually separate ToDo items or other blocks of text, so having wonky mixed single/double line spacing is a disaster.

If I paste plain text into a note, it has normal single spacing. But if I hit enter at the end of a line of text, it seems to change to double-spaced mode. (As other people have suggested, I wonder if EverNote inserts \n\r and then reads this as two newline characters...)

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I just want to be able to click a button for double spacing on evernote just like any other word processor.

But Evernote is not a word processing program. Or even, except in a fairly rudimentary sense, a text editing program. While Evernote has indicated that there may be improvements someday in the text editing functions, right now, you're perhaps be less frustrated typing in a program designed to do what you want.

Best of luck.

This is the massive problem with Evernote. The staff simply don't listen. It is no good saying what Evernote is NOT. Why not listen to what people want and need it to be? I am a writer and we NEED LINE SPACING if we are to work with Evernote. We need to choose between single, one and a half spacing and double, when we want and for it to stay that way from app to app. Anything else is just rubbish. To say it is not a word processor is insulting and amateur. What do you think Evernote is? A toy, clearly. Evernote is only getting away this because there is no competition out there who does a better job of the word processor. Once someone does watch Evernote collapse. Why can Evernote not sort out the formatting issue which is rubbish from one app to the next and why do you not make it a professional word processor and then novelists and other writers will use it? At the moment it a shabby piece of equipment too keen on networking and sharing. You forget not everyone wants to share!! We just want an app and a program fit for purpose not a multi tasking tool with the first, most basic task, that of INPUT not working properly. Please listen to your forums and not just tell us to go and find another program. Or we just will.

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I repeat... "That would be fine, megsaint, IF what you typed [in another program] looked the same when pasted into Evernote. That's the problem."

There are times when I'm dealing with single-spaced text and do something very simple like delete a line of text or combine two lines and, all of a sudden, I'm at double spacing or one-and-a-half spacing with NO simple way to get single spacing back.

The frustrating thing is that Evernote seems to spend so much of its time on esoteric new features that can't be applicable to more than a small minority of users and ignores the cries of so many who want simple functionality. It can't be that difficult because hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of other programs have those basic capabilities.

Why not take some of the time spent on programming to capture new customers with exotic capabilities and spend that time programming to make the base happy?

It really is a mystery. It seems it would take so little of your programming time to make so many of your current customers so much happier.

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This is the massive problem with Evernote. The staff simply don't listen. It is no good saying what Evernote is NOT. Why not listen to what people want and need it to be? I am a writer and we NEED LINE SPACING if we are to work with Evernote. We need to choose between single, one and a half spacing and double, when we want and for it to stay that way from app to app. Anything else is just rubbish. To say it is not a word processor is insulting and amateur. What do you think Evernote is? A toy, clearly. Evernote is only getting away this because there is no competition out there who does a better job of the word processor. Once someone does watch Evernote collapse. Why can Evernote not sort out the formatting issue which is rubbish from one app to the next and why do you not make it a professional word processor and then novelists and other writers will use it? At the moment it a shabby piece of equipment too keen on networking and sharing. You forget not everyone wants to share!! We just want an app and a program fit for purpose not a multi tasking tool with the first, most basic task, that of INPUT not working properly. Please listen to your forums and not just tell us to go and find another program. Or we just will.

The Evernote staff *do* listen; but they can't do everything all at once (note that people like megsaint and myself are not Evernote staff).

I'd call Evernote's editing capabilities in the realm of rich-text editing, and not full-on word-processing. It's a spectrum to me. Many users do want its editing functionality to be stronger (as do I), and asking for it is certainly valid.

On the other hand, sharing your notes across devices is a primary focus for Evernote (the other biggies are in collecting and accessing note content). They're not forgetting anything; they're just focusing on a that they think is their strength. There certainly *are* better word processors out there (MS Word, for an obvious choice); for true word-processing, I use them, and if I need to have that available on different devices, then I add the doc as an attachment. Most of the time, for the things that I do in Evernote, I find I don't need Word; Evernote suits just fine.

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The Evernote staff *do* listen; but they can't do everything all at once

At once? Just this thread alone is over three years old!

Sure they do; listening is a distinctly different activity than doing. There are other topics here, too, and other things to do. So they prioritize. Just to be clear, I'd be happy if they fixed all of the niggling problems that the various editors have across all of their platforms, for sure. That would make a lot of people happy. And yes, improvements have been made over time. Unfortunately this one hasn't. None of that means that they're not listening, or unsympathetic.

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Totally agree.. I'm a Premium Member and am constantly irritated by the editing glitches and inconsistencies. I regularly have to edit in Word or Notepad and paste from there. The first line of defense always seems that Evernote is not a word processor. Well I type into notes and Evernote formats it (of sorts) and I can change fonts and so on, so I think by definition it is a word processor. Just a particularly bad one that has issues that have been well documented for many years. The total focus seems to be on bringing out new facilities (I wonder what the take-up of ScanSnap is at $495?). I love Evernote and use it constantly, but the basic problems should have been sorted out years ago!

I'm also finding a lot of issues with the formatting of Web Clipper being all over the place sometimes. It seems to be browser dependent to some extent, maybe not liking Chrome? I probably use this facility more than any other and can't wait till 2018 when it's fully working properly.

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Evernote has always had subpar text editing - and I am putting it very mildly. Use it for the ease of syncing among your various devices, but don’t try to do anything in Evernote that requires any text editing features... at all.

Been like this for 10 years now; I don’t believe it will ever change.

My thinking is that if they do decide to add features related to the text editor, DON'T . . . . . unless they also make those features work! E.g., tables. They don’t work in Evernote. Haven't since about 2008. If they don’t want to make tables work correctly they shouldn’t have that feature in Evernote IMO.

Ever paste a block of text into Evernote and when you try to edit it later find out that you can only select all the text, as if it was an image? I don’t bother trying to edit anything at all in Evernote. Once pasted, that's it! Let it be.

And did I mention that it almost definitely will not get any better than this? (Editing text, that is). Use EN for what it is and do not hope for or expect a lot of neat features to be added. Real feature; not the trimmings they love to add, but working, useful features. For that ther are a number of other note-taking programs that do text editing well.

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Blowed if I can see any bug here. I just tried copying pararaphs of text from Gmail into Evernote and it copied just fine. I used Paste as Text because i don't want whatever random font Gmail has come up. Text is formatted perfectly in Evernote.

If you want an option to change the text to double-spaced - and I cannot for the life of me imagine why - then that would be a feature request.

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The arguments that Evernote is not a word processor, and that this problem is incidental, simply don't cut it. By definition, a plain text editor uses simple character sets. Word processor documents generally contained formatted text, a la Evernote.

The issue here is with text formatting. While the solution may not be simple, defining this is as an elementary and significant formatting issue should be a no brainer.

Even though I confine myself to using the most basic formatting whenever possible to avoid these errors, I love Evernote and use it frequently. I would be happy to see these basic format errors corrected.

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You have my sympathies. I'm one of those many longing for a better text editor.

The arguments that Evernote is not a word processor, and that this problem is incidental, simply don't cut it. By definition, a plain text editor uses simple character sets. Word processor documents generally contained formatted text, a la Evernote.

The issue here is with text formatting. While the solution may not be simple, defining this is as an elementary and significant formatting issue should be a no brainer.

Even though I confine myself to using the most basic formatting whenever possible to avoid these errors, I love Evernote and use it frequently. I would be happy to see these basic format errors corrected.

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Nothing's changed since the first complaint four years ago. When I get unwanted line spacing (so that a note can't all be read on one screen but irritatingly continues off screen) I go through the unnecessarily long-winded process of copying the note into Word, then >Format >Paragraph >Line Spacing >Single line then copy the note back over the original Evernote text.

I'm too old, have too little time left to be wasting it on this!

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The problem is that Evernote is not a word processor, but I use a lot of copy from various web sites who either do not conform to the same HTML standards that Evernote uses, or use some other form of coding to generate the material. It would be great if Evernote had some way of capturing the text (but leaving properly formed hyperlinks intact), and then allowing us to make headings H1, H2, H3, etc., without a lot of work-arounds.

Thus, Evernote clearly falls under the category of being a word processor. Now, if we could just process words as well as facts....

The problem is that Evernote is not a word processor, but I use a lot of copy from various web sites who either do not conform to the same HTML standards that Evernote uses, or use some other form of coding to generate the material. It would be great if Evernote had some way of capturing the text (but leaving properly formed hyperlinks intact), and then allowing us to make headings H1, H2, H3, etc., without a lot of work-arounds.

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I joined this forum just to say that this BUG (not just a missing feature) has stopped me from taking up using EN.

I have a simple requirement: to be able to copy and paste notes, apply basic formatting and have these available across mac, pc and iphone. That is all.

Only being able to view/ edit a few lines of text in a note from a large window due to unchangeable line spacing and poorly laid out wasted space title bars is just pointless. And who has time to shrink down title bars and windows EVERY time?

Also discovered the following negatives to EN in my arduous research:

- too many steps to open/ save a note

- lack of uniformity across platforms

- When the web app goes offline, the page disappears, rather than an error saying 'cannot connect' but still allowing editing/ ability to copy and paste somewhere else without losing it all.. such as in an email draft!

- useless moderators/ evangelists such as megsaint on page 2 that get their facts wrong and likely do not relay information or attempt to address failures in any way.

Seems strange as I was told EN was a user friendly and useful platform for note taking!?

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No-one, especially the Moderators/Evangalists has ever claimed Evernote is "perfect," and they are in fact, often leading the charge, so to speak, regarding feature enhancements & requests, as well as bringing bugs to Evernote's attention.

They do not, however, work for Evernote and are just users like the rest of us. Users who very generously use their *own* precious time and personal devices, to assist other users in any way they can to resolve whatever issues they may have. Often times, offering possible workarounds and explaining what the different apps can or cannot do, is the only thing they *can* do. A lot of us, *including* the moderators/evangalists, are also unhappy about the text editor and have repeatedly told Evernote staff about persistent issues with it. Evernote has made some improvements on it in recent months, and said more are on the way.

I personally agree that it still has a long way to go before it can be considered on par with other, basic model rich text editors on the market. But again, as much as many of us want Evernote to be a repository and a fully-fledged task manager with full word processing capability - basically a one-stop app for average daily computing - it is not. And according to CEO, it likely never will be. We may not agree with Evernotes choices and business decisions, but it's their company.

I'm sorry you feel burned and I hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere. But before you go, I'd like to point out one more thing... The moderaters/evangalists are NOT useless! They are in fact, EXTREMELY HELPFUL, polite and friendly.

And, in my opinion, *exceedingly patient* considering that a select few like yourself - who seem to think it's okay to come onto a public forum seeking help with software from people who do NOT work for the company, *volunteer* their time & effort, and recieve ZERO compensation, fling ABUSE on them when you don't get the answers you're hoping for!

Please people, I get being frustrated to the point of anger. But I don't understand - nor do I want to - why some think it's socially acceptable to go on a public forum that is *not* one's personal space, like say your Facebook, and word puke vile, venomous posts. It is not okay.

It. Is. Just. Not. Okay.

Go ahead, express your frustration, even your anger, but do show some respect. Or at least some dignity.

Everyone post on this forum was made by a real live human being. Don't be a keyboard commando.

I joined this forum just to say that this BUG (not just a missing feature) has stopped me from taking up using EN.

I have a simple requirement: to be able to copy and paste notes, apply basic formatting and have these available across mac, pc and iphone. That is all.

Only being able to view/ edit a few lines of text in a note from a large window due to unchangeable line spacing and poorly laid out wasted space title bars is just pointless. And who has time to shrink down title bars and windows EVERY time?

Also discovered the following negatives to EN in my arduous research:

- too many steps to open/ save a note

- lack of uniformity across platforms

- When the web app goes offline, the page disappears, rather than an error saying 'cannot connect' but still allowing editing/ ability to copy and paste somewhere else without losing it all.. such as in an email draft!

- useless moderators/ evangelists such as megsaint on page 2 that get their facts wrong and likely do not relay information or attempt to address failures in any way.

Seems strange as I was told EN was a user friendly and useful platform for note taking!?

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Thanks again to the helpful contributors to this forum. Through them I learned about 'Paste and Match Style' and 'Past as Plain Text,' which meet my needs (OS X, EN 5.5.2).

Other than the comment about 'useless moderators,' sodusingevernote's frustrations are reasonable and the things pointed out in the post can reasonably called bugs.

As a user of Lotus Notes 3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Notes#History), I can say from experience that there were certain keystrokes and mouse clicks that I had to make every single time I edited a note (which I was required to do for my job) that caused me to come to hate using Notes — though in many ways, it was a decent and flexible collaborative platform. I often thought to myself, 'why can't the Lotus UI developers give me a way to avoid repeating these annoying procedures dozens of times each day?'

My only advice to EN is: don't let a seemingly small bug drive users to hate using their product. My 2¢. Thank you.

- dcp

No-one, especially the Moderators/Evangalists has ever claimed Evernote is "perfect," and they are in fact, often leading the charge, so to speak, regarding feature enhancements & requests, as well as bringing bugs to Evernote's attention.

They do not, however, work for Evernote and are just users like the rest of us. Users who very generously use their *own* precious time and personal devices, to assist other users in any way they can to resolve whatever issues they may have. Often times, offering possible workarounds and explaining what the different apps can or cannot do, is the only thing they *can* do. A lot of us, *including* the moderators/evangalists, are also unhappy about the text editor and have repeatedly told Evernote staff about persistent issues with it. Evernote has made some improvements on it in recent months, and said more are on the way.

I personally agree that it still has a long way to go before it can be considered on par with other, basic model rich text editors on the market. But again, as much as many of us want Evernote to be a repository and a fully-fledged task manager with full word processing capability - basically a one-stop app for average daily computing - it is not. And according to CEO, it likely never will be. We may not agree with Evernotes choices and business decisions, but it's their company.

I'm sorry you feel burned and I hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere. But before you go, I'd like to point out one more thing... The moderaters/evangalists are NOT useless! They are in fact, EXTREMELY HELPFUL, polite and friendly.

And, in my opinion, *exceedingly patient* considering that a select few like yourself - who seem to think it's okay to come onto a public forum seeking help with software from people who do NOT work for the company, *volunteer* their time & effort, and recieve ZERO compensation, fling ABUSE on them when you don't get the answers you're hoping for!

Please people, I get being frustrated to the point of anger. But I don't understand - nor do I want to - why some think it's socially acceptable to go on a public forum that is *not* one's personal space, like say your Facebook, and word puke vile, venomous posts. It is not okay.

It. Is. Just. Not. Okay.

Go ahead, express your frustration, even your anger, but do show some respect. Or at least some dignity.

Everyone post on this forum was made by a real live human being. Don't be a keyboard commando.

I joined this forum just to say that this BUG (not just a missing feature) has stopped me from taking up using EN.

I have a simple requirement: to be able to copy and paste notes, apply basic formatting and have these available across mac, pc and iphone. That is all.Only being able to view/ edit a few lines of text in a note from a large window due to unchangeable line spacing and poorly laid out wasted space title bars is just pointless. And who has time to shrink down title bars and windows EVERY time?

Also discovered the following negatives to EN in my arduous research:- too many steps to open/ save a note- lack of uniformity across platforms- When the web app goes offline, the page disappears, rather than an error saying 'cannot connect' but still allowing editing/ ability to copy and paste somewhere else without losing it all.. such as in an email draft!- useless moderators/ evangelists such as megsaint on page 2 that get their facts wrong and likely do not relay information or attempt to address failures in any way.

Seems strange as I was told EN was a user friendly and useful platform for note taking!?

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The lack of line spacing in Evernote makes me very sad. The latest update actually broke the workaround that I was using, so now all of my notes are in single-space instead of the 1.5 that I really prefer.

Line spacing really is rock-bottom basic functionality -- along with font, size, bold and italics. I love using Evernote; it's the tool I use most often in my day -- but the lack of line spacing makes me want to give it up and try something else.

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Switched over to EN when SpringPad closed down. This not being fixed after all these years and after all these posts. What does that lead people to believe? This is a simple feature that can be a significant and constant annoyance. I am seeing this problem using the web version. Cut-paste=extra line spacing.

EN why aren't you fixing this? This is important and there are lots of competing apps after our membership. Not just this issue but how this is being handled by EN is a consideration for me to switch. We like EN and do not want to have to switch. Please listen...thank you.

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And that sums up the the biggest problem for me. I want to use it for simple MoM, notes to people without the hazzle of making "formal" documents when the need for speed and content is more important than format (read e.g. a "proper" MoM Word document). This is NOT SO EASY when I don't have control over the line spacing. Excpeciallty the UNWANTED "double spacing"-between lines or whatever it is. Who knows.

I use iPad and even cut&paste into "Plaint text" app and back doesn't work. I really thinks this is my biggest hazzle at the time beeing and makes me wonder really hard ---> Is it not somebody out there that can be a real contender for Evernote - FOUR YEARS is a long time (ref. other post here)

Sigh... the problem is not wanting to change the text to double-spacing... the problem is REMOVING the auto-imbedded double-spacing that EN inserts.

And yes, it IS a bug, b/c the program inserts it randomly and against the intention of the user.

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Interesting how this thread started two years ago has remained completely actual...Why EN does not see any priority in improving not even a bit on the text editor beats me, really. My problems & workarounds concerning line spacing are exactly the same as above, so sorry, no news there. I always suspected it would have to do with the way html tags are handled under the cover of a paste, like emerick mentions above. But then, since we're talking basic html text editing, why not add a little functionality to access these simple 'style' html tags?! Blogs, cms editors, you name it, all of them offer that. Some button to switch to 'Source' (of the visible note text) and hop there you go <spaN style="line-spacing:1em;"> or whatever you'd want. (I put N to not have this comment itself become html...)Hey!? The editor of this forum, of this very post while I'm typing this even offers that access!! Left top: Toggle editing mode! So what's the <em> real </em> [hey, that didn't work! this did] difference between text in a ENote, and in a html page? Mmm....EN will of course not be telling the full story between the lines here....?My guess is it has to do with some old, native and very deeply rooted implementation of how pasted/saved data is filtered, stripped and then represented. I full agree with Jeanmiele that this is much more a BUG (a major flaw even) than a feature request.I'm using EN very daily to gather ideas, inspirations and references for projects; at the start, but also a lot half way the process. To gather 'what is around' on some topic (e.g. material looks, similar design examples, variations on the same theme) before making a next process decision. And along the way the notes in which I paste what I find and annotate ALWAYS gradually turn into reviewing documents of the sources given a topic. That is actually exactly what I want to do using Evernote: brigding between the divergent gathering state (aka a mess of inspiration) and the first steps of convergent ordering and reviewing, into a readable, sharable document (or page). Text is ESSENTIAL there. No need for full-blown textbook editing, but ABSOLUTELY more than what is offered now, especially if you want to hand it over to the following, even more definite, publishing step (e.g. a google doc, report, a LaTeX thesis, a web page, blog, whatever).So why o why o why is changing line spacing (and any other html/css style attribute) not on the menu?

I use Windows and iOS. Both have this problem. I don't have the "Simple Formatting" option to try on either one. I pasted a portion of an email to save the contact info and now everything from that point on is double spaced. I copied the entire note to the word processor, formatted it, deleted the note on Evernote and pasted the formatted note back in. The double spacing is still there, but not on the word processor. I use Evernote all the time and this, along with changing the font and style whenever it wants is starting to drive me crazy. I'm not a programmer, but it seems like it would be a simple fix.

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If you select all the lines with double-spacing and select Increase Indentation (Ctrl M) and then subsequently Decrease Indentation (Ctrl Shift M), it removes the double-spacing. Just a work-around...

Fantastic! This work-around works! I've already tried paste-as-text and simplify formatting, but those two options don't always prevent or remove the double spacing. Fingers crossed this increase/decrease indent trick (1) works all the time and (2) works on the iPad.

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Not being able to change paragraph spacing is a big pain. Mainly a problem when clipping from the web, and the original formatting is exaggerated to create a huge long note from what should be a relatively compact one. Surely not a difficult request...

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This is the main reason why I have chosen to stick with Google Docs. Until this is changes Evernote is not usable for me. (adjusting the leading and/or the extra linespace after a [return] cannot be that tricky.)

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It's surprising that Evernote have not fixed this. It is a particular problem with their web-clipped. All the work-arounds seem to work for the existing text, but then the note reverts to double-spacing for new text.

!

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I agree. This is basic and it's tremendously annoying not to be able to control it. On another note, it feels as if all the type has been slightly spaced out from the minimal leading it used to have. I don't know if it's an EN thing, a browser thing, or a Windows thing (my mail system is also displaying with more leading than it used to) but I want to be able to bring the old compact look back.

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Interesting thread, considering adjusting line spacing is a very common addition in most note pads and word processes, I am curios why this has not been added/refined for EVERNOTE as you are a leading edge company and product.

Problem I am having is this.

I just updated to the latest version for Windows-

5.9.0.8665 GA

1. Now when I create cells, I cannot use the line tool within cell.

2. Whenever I use the line tool now in any created notes or new ones the line spacing between line and anything created or pasted is to large and cannot easily be adjusted if adjustable at all, in some cases, not at all.

3. Cells with adjustable columns fail to auto size and stretch, they will disappear off the edge of the screen forcing me to stretch EVERNOTE and will actually go so far off screen that I can stretch the full length of my 27in monitor and still not see it all and there are no scroll bars in cells that I can see or find.

Content added to multiple cells will also start a new line as apposed to stretching even when there is seemingly plenty of room. I know you just add3d the ability to adjust the width of a cell, but it was automatic before update, so??? Also your automatic adjustment of cell that worked before update does not seem to work on certain cells I ale=ready have created???

Worked fine before latest update???

TY.

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Long-time user of Evernote, i too have experienced incredible frustration at the primitive editting tools. Many times i have had to just leave a note looking ugly cuz I could not get it to format right, and having to settle for ugly notes is just wrong.

In the pic is a note that's partially single-spaced and partially double-spaced thru no fault of my own. Technically it's that line height has doubled--there are no blank lines i can delete after the Payment line. Even a minor edit of the single-spaced-looking part, like putting a colon after Order Received, will add a big blank line space between that line and the Thank you line. This is unacceptable.

I agree with the previous posts in this thread of the past 5 years: This is a bug. And like the OP, i don't want to have to strip formatting or run other programs or functions first, not requiring me to settle for an ugly note is the least i can expect, even from free software.

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Not that I wish to disabuse you of any hope for a fix, but you can see how long this thread has been going, so I will. They haven't done anything to even acknowledge the issue, let alone do anything to cure it. (BTW, some moderators have expressed concern, but nothing at all from the Evernote "team" on the problem.) Just don’t consider Evernote a program to keep any nice-looking notes. You are better off storing such notes in another program. Use Evernote for the "uglies".

Jim

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I was just hoping maybe all it will take is one more, just one more complaint, for this issue to reach critical mass. Probably every one of us posting dissatisfaction here over the past 5 years thought that.

Dy

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@Dy and previous: indeed, such was my idle hope too. I 'joined the line-spacing complainers thread' now years ago and actually subscribed to the topic for curiosity if anything would ever happen. Receiving a note every now an then of someone else dissatisfied, like a flash of a lost and forgotten lighthouse.

Poetry aside, I can only explain EN's absolute radio silence on this pretty common yet missing feature with two reasons: official obstinacy to help, or this call being way too invisible to anyone in power to do so. Both quite unworthy of a company grown so big in the years this thread spun

(Actually, now i notice the thread has been moved to a Windows section, it wasn't there before I think since I'm on mac..)

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if it's too difficult to fix the formatting issue maybe there are others approach? ex: provide a "source code" button to allow the switch to the note source code (like we have in usual a wysiwyg). Doing this you let us a chance to try to fix the html issues..

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Well, the workarounds mentioned in this thread -- increasing then decreasing indent, adding then removing bullets, making the text bold then unbold -- aren't working for me. I'm using Windows version 5.9.1.8742. This really SUCKS.

the procedure could be automated using Evernote's developper API; but the advantage of this approach is that you don't need any fancy tool, programming skills or give access to your data / account to a 3rd party.

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I select the entire article I have copied and pasted in EN, then I right-click on the mouse and select "Simplify Formatting" or select the text and hit Ctrl+Space. That works for me.________________________________________________________________________________________________

I've attached a very basic note showing the problem, just 3 lines where "simplify or remove formatting" won't work for me (using the windows version of evernote). The problem is a global parameter stored in the note itself that can't be changed from the EN GUI. However, it can be removed by manually editing the note source (.enex file); or alternatively one could start a fresh note and paste the content.

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StBU6, that's a lot of actions to do for each note! There are much shorter workarounds posted earlier in this thread.

Jim

Jim, sure... I would also prefer to have that handled properly by EN itself...

Btw, you may export a complete notebook or just the ones you want to modify (all of them will be stored in a single .enex file), use the "replace all" feature of your favorite text editor and re-import the full thing again.

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Unbelievable is right! Sometimes companies are so busy chasing exotic new features and technologies that they just neglect the basics. Sometimes companies are so taken with enticing new customers that they neglect the needs and wishes of their loyal following.